Old Data
by DoctorWholigan
Summary: Surge is one of the prominent figures in the Resistance before Neo's discovery - little does he know that as a boy, an Agent saved his life. Now, can he count on O'Brien to do it again? (Chapter 5 to come...)
1. The Memory Remains

He couldn't understand how of all things in the world, he would be addicted to cigarettes when he had never actually had one pass his lips in his entire life. It seemed unfair to the man who was leaning against the bulkhead of the small, dimly lit hovercraft, that the one thing he craved more than anything else was the sweet kiss of nicotine, and he had done nothing to deserve it. In the bowels of the Resistor he sat, the tangled mess of hoses and conduits around him like ship's intestines, chewing on a stick he had found that for once, wasn't metal. He'd had enough of that, metal. Too much metal, not enough nicotine. That was his problem. It couldn't kill him if he smoked a thousand packs a day when he had the chance, because for long time, he had been free. But still, he woke each morning on the bunk in his tiny metal box which smelled heavily of grease - as most of the Resistor did - and instantly he yearned for a cigarette.  
  
He had been quite the rebel in his youth. The only difference now was that his hair was short, more like a Marine Corps buzzcut than the ponytail he used to affect on himself. It was a rather thrilling adventure, he remembered, being found out by the woman in black leather - which had been like some sort of dream, to have an attractive woman in tight leathers seeking him out in a bar - and taken to meet the man who had ultimately denied him cigarettes. Longing for the touch of a filter on his lips for an instant, the Red Pill had cost him that for eternity. Why, he wondered, didn't he take the Blue Pill? Because he liked to think he was an adventurer, something he had very well become, but certainly didn't feel like any more. With long, slender fingers he reached for his chest, picking a spot on the broad expanse of hard muscle to scratch at out of total boredom.  
  
His first cigarette... He could still remember it. Just sixteen, hiding from the Principal behind the gym with Lawerence Ramsay and John O'Brien. Coughing his lungs up, his friends clapped him on the back in the way that showed they were still very impressed with the boy they never thought would take a puff, and that he had finally taken a step towards the kind of idiocy they thought would be manhood. Principal Woods had grabbed him roughly by the collar, and John had taken off behind the groundskeeper's rough little shed... Then Woods grabbed him again, in the same place with the same hand. John kicked him smartly in the shins, and he dropped like a lead balloon. He could remember it as clear as a bright summer's day that he would never see again. Though it wasn't real, the memory remained.  
  
Ah, music. They could never take that away from him. That had always been real, one of the marvels of human ingenuity. His fingers reached up to the thin line he had pressed his lips into around his makeshift cigarette - ciggy, smoke, cancer stick, he'd heard it all - and they began pushing out a tune to keep him company. In the bleak light around him, his whistled reproduction of 'The Memory Remains' pinged off metallic walls, resounding around the engine room as though he were Whistler for the London Symphony Orchestra. Appropriate, he thought - a metallic sound to a song by Metallica. How he longed to hear the real sound, so loud it could blast the decades of grime and grease that had built up over the bulkheads which imprisoned him. But that, too, was impossible. Red Pill.  
  
Finishing his song, he stood up, having quite a distance to stand because another thing that was very real about him was that he was a little taller than six feet. The gritty black trousers which hung from his impressive frame were still able to drape around buckled combat boots, which he thought would look all that much better if they weren't permeated with the same amount of miscellaneous debris as his grey t-shirt, which had been white once upon a time but had slowly gotten so much grime on it that nobody could be bothered to tell the difference. It was also pocked with so many holes that Joule had commented he looked more like the moon than a man. He wondered idly if the moon still existed in this world he was torn back into, because not one of them had actually ever seen beyond the shifting maelstrom of cloud that covered their new lives. That was of course, assuming you ever got to see beyond the steel walls of the ship you were 'reborn' into. Jack had called it being reborn, but he, Surge, insisted it was like being spat out of something that decided you were no good for it anymore, like a bug, or some cancerous cell.  
  
The sound of his own whistling was sharply punctuated with light, pinging steps as somebody descended the metal stairwell to Surge's right - to say that it was metal may not be totally necessary, seeing as how most things in Surge's life were so. He knew that those steps certainly weren't Volt's, or Jack's, they were both burly men like himself that seemed to stomp wherever they went, and liked to seem rather a lot bigger than they were. Sure enough, Joule descended, setting foot on the grating which covered the innermost sanctum of the Resistor's workings. She looked every bit as gorgeous as Surge remembered her when they first met, and he had gone by a different name entirely, when Andrew Dalton had stood, unable to help but stare at the woman in black while he stood by in his stuffy suit. Even outside, her figure was trim, her body didn't have a single jot of hanging or excess skin, everything curved just enough for his tastes, with all the inny outy bits he liked going inny and outy in just the way that he thought they should. "I didn't know you liked Metallica," she laughed, her voice light, airy, and as Surge had told her once whilst plastered from far too many of Bulldog's drinks, she sounded like she was always singing.  
  
"Good music," he replied gruffly in his tenored voice. "You'd think I'd had enough of heavy metal, huh?" One broad sweep of his large hand took in all that surrounded the pair, a smile that was not entirely forced put onto his lips. Something always tried to make him smile when Joule was around.  
  
A sheepish giggle escaped her rosy lips, and Surge dropped his pale blue eyes to the deck where they stood. If he ever looked at her face long enough, things started happening that really shouldn't between the ship's First Mate, and him, who they *called* the Chief Engineer, but who really spent most of his time tinkering with the reactor and hoping it didn't give out, screaming his inadequacy. "Silly boy, you'll have had enough of it once we reach Zion."  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I know the stories. Big, wonderful city under the ground, the last bastion of human hope." He stuck out his tongue distastefully. "We talk about it like it were the be-all and end-all of ship life, and what does it get for us? Life as worms, Joule. We crawl into the dirt and we hide. I'm sick of not fighting, Jack doesn't see it?"  
  
Joule shook her head ruefully, one thin blonde brow flicking towards the ceiling. "Now don't make me take you down for insubordination," she chided playfully. Surge was not in the mood for it, shaking his head so quickly it looked as if it might drop off. "We fight as often as we can, Surge, you must see that. There is only so much that six people can do against the world." She took a step foward, placing one delicate hand on his chest. "Only so much one man can do."  
  
As much as he would have liked to have stayed angry with her, with Jack, with the whole damned galaxy, Surge's knees felt as if they were going to collapse under him at her touch. He nodded as slowly as he could without it looking as if he was standing still, and a jet of breath shot from his mouth in one of his heavy sighs. "You're right, as always. I know Bulldog and Panzer agree with me, though. They've always known Zion, and from what they've heard about the Matrix, they'd rather have lived their lives in it and been freed like us."  
  
"They didn't, did they?"  
  
Surge's beefy shoulders gave a shrug, and he managed to look up from his boots, tracing his eyes up Joule's body slower than absolutely necessary... "Bulldog thought so. Don't know that Panzer was really that keen on the idea of having been a Duracell Baby, but hell, anything beats Zion food, eh? Single-celled protein my torn arsehole. That isn't food."  
  
She nodded glumly, and draped herself over Surge's chest, who wrapped his arms around her waist as carefully as he could without his hands getting anywhere they shouldn't go. "We're going back in, soon. Jack thinks he's found him."  
  
"Who?" Surge already knew the answer.  
  
"The One."  
  
***  
  
Sentient. Did it mean to be alive? He was not alive, he was sure of it. He had never been born, he had no parents, and he did not have a body plugged into the powerplants outside of the realm he had been given free reign over. On the television over the bar, he could see an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' being re-run, which managed to confuse even his intellect no end, because it was fictional, much like the lies of the world which he was wearing, sitting on, and even then, drinking. A steaming black coffee sat in front of him as he regarded Data, the android one. His crew, his 'friends' all thought he was alive. The man with the coffee was not alive. He had no friends, no crew, only associates. One of them sat across the table from him, also with a pungent coffee before him. Neither of them drank. The aroma of the coffee was merely a distraction from the pervading stench of the world around the sombre pair, the simulated stink almost visible to the man watching Star Trek.  
  
"We have the name of the next target." His associate, in a severely cut black suit, was business as always, seemingly ignorant of his train of thought. "It is a boy. He calls himself Spike."  
  
"Spike?" The man stared through black plastic shields at his coffee, steam rising like rising trails of cloud. "Which ship is nearest?"  
  
"Judging by last known proximity taken from the Sentinels, the Resistor is most likely the closest of their ships." His associate stared straight at him, eyes boring into him even through the square, rimless glasses they both wore. "His ship."  
  
"Why does it concern you?"  
  
"He clouds your judgement."  
  
"My judgement is never clouded."  
  
"You are fallible, like him."  
  
"I am nothing like him."  
  
His associate's tone was as dry and deadpan as it usually was, nevertheless he managed to portray one of his rare displeased faces, lips pulled into a thin line across his jaw. "Since the one they now call the Oracle left us, they do not fear us as they used to. Do not fail us as she did, O'Brien, or They will have you removed from the system on mere suspicion."  
  
Despite the ominous portent, the dark-suited man who had been given the name O'Brien couldn't help himself but to smile in the grim, menacing way only a sentient program, a hunter-killer, an Agent, possibly could. "Doe... For one who concerns himself with my studies in human psychology, you display an increasing number of their traits. Concern for your comrades, hmm?"  
  
Doe laced his fingers in the handle of his cup, lifting the coffee and feigning a drink so the populace would not suspect. Acting on a silent order from him, the barman was forced to hand out a beer to a customer not once, but twice, as the amount of coffee in Doe's cup was reduced by a mere sip.  
  
"Whoah... Deja vu." 


	2. The Creatures Under the Stairs...

"What do you think this is, human? A game?"  
  
-- Ares, 'The Journeyman Project'  
  
Surge pulled more of the obsidian black greatcoat he wore around himself, and merged with the shadows once again. He shifted back into the darkness as far as he could possibly go without putting his backside against wet, mossy bricks. His hands were trembling as they always did when he visited this place, this world, this city that never was, jerking softly on the ends of his wrists as though they wanted to leap free of him and escape the tension. Instead they reached into the swathes of black material, taking out a crushed, nearly empty packet of 'Lucky Strikes' - cigarettes, no less. Over his head were steel steps, the simulated summer sun beating down from a sky so blue it could have been painted, and under the soles of his boots was wet, dripping sewage. That, he didn't need. He plugged the Lucky into his lips and pulled his lighter, setting the tiny tobacco tube alight and drawing a long breath. That, he did need. Craved.  
  
Volt was beside him in the dark, murmuring dejectedly under his breath a number of anti-smoking campaign slogans that Surge had heard thousands of times before, but was as deaf to now as he always had been. Volt's malachite eyes lifted to a chink in the staircase where the sun was arcing through the darkness, motes of dust dancing across the plane of silver which lanced over his pale face. "Don't see anything yet. Jack's been a while." An insignificant little blue light pushed aside some of the black for Volt to read the time from his fancy sportswatch. "An hour or so, I guess. You think he's okay?" A couple of inches shorter than Surge, though heavier by a good few pounds, Volt's round face was set as calmly as he possibly could manage; his lip was twitching constantly into the nervous tic he'd developed.  
  
"Of course he is. It's Jack, right?" Jack had an annoying habit of being alright, and thinking that he was all right at the same time. The man, he was never wrong, although the times he had actually been wrong were many, and he'd barely covered up his wretched mistakes before Joule, Volt, Bulldog or Panzer could tell he was not the leader they all imagined him to be. Surge wanted no more of that. Today was going to be one of *those* days in the Matrix, he had that hot itch behind his left ear he always did when something would happen. Bulldog joked, calling him the Oracle. He had remembered her words to him, then, from over five years past... 'Remember, a man is not measured by what he can't be... A man should be measured by what he is.' Surge gave another muted grunt, and sunk to the brick beneath him so he could kneel onto the cap of one boot.  
  
***  
  
He was seven years old. It was another perfect day, the kind where the sky is baby blue, the grass is greener than you thought it could be, delightfully soft under young feet. The earth that he had never seen through open eyes would squelch beneath those same feet, because of the fact that the hands on the same body as those feet were clutching a hose, dragging it across the back lawn of the Dalton residence to refill the family's pool. Andrew, renown amongst the school Soccer team for being incredibly agile for his age, was hauling the hose towards the pool with it hosing - as hoses tend to do - water all across the grass, and the ground was becoming rather slushy, like chocolate pudding... Andrew had eaten enough dirt, but those days were over according to him. Eating dirt was for little kids. He could hear Mr Raines next door, singing something about a 'Three Hour Tour' whilst he pruned his roses. Andrew lifted a pudgy young hand and waved over the waist height fence. Mr Raines didn't so much as look up. John O'Brian, another of the Soccer team's targets, called to his friend from the doorway to the house. "D'you want a chocolate muffin?"  
  
Of course he did. He shifted on one heel, trying to turn and wave his affirmative to his friend at the same time. The mud beneath his feet chose that moment to mount a rebellion, turning hideously slick. Andrew's feet simply took off out from under him, sailing into the air above his head as his top end tumbled over the edge of the pool, and he was in, the hose snagging around his arm. The green coils slithered around his arms the more he struggled, the water churning around him, up his nose and into his mouth whenever he tried to snatch a breath into his heavy chest. As his eyes began to fall closed, he fancied a bright flash of light from over the fence, and something vaulted the fence which he couldn't make out beneath the layer of foam over his head...  
  
"Are you alright?" The question came from a voice so calm, so devoid of anything related to human emotion, that young Andrew Dalton would have sworn that it had come from that really neat talking computer he had seen on the television. He opened his blue eyes - significantly watered, but no worse for wear - and looked up with his back against the mud which threw him in the pool, onto a man whose eyes he could not see, but he guessed held about all the warmth and compassion as a frozen halibut. A pair of black, rimless sunglasses covered his eyes, and the cord to an earplug hanged from his right ear and into his black suit jacket. "Andrew Dalton, are you alright?"  
  
Andrew, Mr Dalton, Surge, could think of only one thing to respond with. "Can you hear the radio on that thing?" One arm which was covered in less mud than the other lifted out of said brown goo and pointed to the earpiece.  
  
The man leaning over him seemed oblivious to the amount of wet, cloggy dirt that was over his knees. "I can hear all sorts of things on this."  
  
The boy's eyes shot wide open, eager to have a demonstration of this fantastic contraption. "Can I have a go?"  
  
"No, I'm afraid you're not allowed to hear. Not yet." He stood, remarkably dignified despite the fact his knees had almost as much mud on them as the seven year old he had saved.  
  
Suddenly, an important question finally struck Andrew that should be asked. "How did you know my name?"  
  
"I know a lot about you, Andrew."  
  
"Who are you?" asked Andrew, curious.  
  
"Agent O'Brian." The suited man turned, headed towards the front of the house, and was gone, leaving only Andrew Dalton, cold, wet, confused and worried, equally certain he had just come across something terribly important but had no idea what it was. His mother appeared in the doorway that John had waved to him from, telling him that his little friend had to go home suddenly and had dropped his muffin all over the new carpet in the hallway and he had better go and clean it up bloody fast or there'd be no TV for him that night. Her presence served only to practically erase the importance of the events beforehand, placing in his mind one imperative: There were chocolate muffins to be had. He had four before he finally decided that he would regret having any more. They were good muffins, with just the right amount of sugar, cocoa, and that stuff that he called 'Bacon Flower' until he was six, all mixed the way they should be until they were, well, muffins.  
  
***  
  
That was, though, the day he first had The Itch. That itch behind his left ear, which always seemed to tell him something was going to happen. Under a set of steel stairs that led into a building he had never before known of and couldn't bring himself to care about, he had it again, tickling at the warm spot just behind his left earlobe, which was being pushed out by one digit scratching around there in habit while he was either itching himself, or thinking. At that moment, he was doing both; thinking about where Jack might be, and scratching himself... Because he was itchy, after all, and regardless of the fact he knew the itch wasn't real, it was quite seriously beginning to irritate him. He ran through a few irrelevant things in the silence of the space that he and Volt occupied. A recipe for chicken salad, the first time he had sex, the exact way to hotwire a '69 Dodge Charger so you could swipe it from under the nose of the neighbour that had moved in after Mr Raines had disappeared, and left his rose garden untended and uncared for. Since O'Brian had overwritten Caleb Raines, and saved his life. It just didn't make sense to him at all, and he would never ask another's opinion.  
  
Within the recesses of comforting memories that had never taken place, Surge failed to notice the sharp rap on the door that made Volt squeak with a half-subdued yelp, scrabbling backward in suprise and falling flat on his rear into the gunk on the brick beneath them. "I got pies," said Jack, swinging open the door, the fresh light chasing the shadows into the corners, and off Surge's face. "Volt, I gotcha mince and cheese." He tossed the greasy bag towards Volt, which simply bounced off his chest and landed in the cold water he was attempting to pick himself up out of. With a self- satisfied sneer, Jack held out the bag which contained the hot pastry filled with meat he had bought for Surge. "Gotcha chicken."  
  
If Jack was attempting to illicit some response from Surge, he was bitterly disappointed in the calm, aloof way in which the latter received his pie, taking it from the bag and chomping down on the crust, gravy dribbling over his chin and narrowly avoiding his coat before landing with a noiseless splat on the ground. Surge had long since learned to ignore Jack's childish taunts, and this was going to be no different. Regardless that Jack had been the one to unplug him, Surge felt no loyalty towards the man other than allowing him to stay on the Resistor. The pie was good, at any rate, even if it did taste like everything. "So? Do you have anything important, or have you just come back from your extended lunch break?" His tone was high, mocking, treading the fine line between flippant and challenging.  
  
Jack was the type to rise to any challenge to his authority much faster than Surge, perhaps the one human who was faster than an Agent at anything. Bristling with indignation, his hands balled into fists, mashing the mince pie in his left into something that was quite inedible, but did a fine job of burning his hand so it felt like he had put it to a hotplate. Volt let off another characteristic squeak at the display, trying desperately to salvage his pie. "I got something, yeah. Kid's in a house not far from here, I caught him playing Half-Life." Jack held aloft a pair of binoculars as high as he could in the small cell-like enclosure. "Saw him edit the program, and kill the G-Man."  
  
Volt punctuated the sentence with a low whistle of appreciation. They had *all* contemplated the ultimate downfall of that animated goon, and for a kid no older than sixteen or so to manage it... Since the advent of 'Counterstrike' there had been no greater accomplishment. Surge gave a casual shrug. "Great, so he kills the G-Man. You think he can do the same thing with an Agent, Jack?"  
  
"I don't have to think," Jack retorted. Surge bit back a comment that no, he never did think. "I know he could." He looked with half-interest at the stinging mess he had made of both his hand and his pie, shaking the pastry debris off his palm and wiping it clean on the knee-length black jacket he wore. "Spike's a smart kid, got an inquisitive streak on him a mile long from what I've seen so far. Could well learn a thing or two you ain't even thought of yet, Surge."  
  
The long slur on his name did not go without Surge noticing, the only outward manifestation being a tiny quirk in one eyebrow, a lá Spock. "He could, yes. But that is the idea behind being The One, Jack, unless you'd forgotten. He isn't any good to us if he turns out to be another Ghent."  
  
"Ghent was stupid," Volt interjected. The other men turned slowly to stare at the crouching figure so inept towards speaking his mind, taking that exact moment to do so. He may as well have been overwritten by an Agent for how unusual it was. "I mean... His name and all was about the uh, only smart thing he... Um, ever picked out. He couldn't write programs for nuts, an' when he, uh, y'know... Tried to fight the Agent?"  
  
They did know. Surge nodded slowly, Jack instead chose to stare at the wall. "Come on. Ghent is gone, and Spike's going to replace him. Spike *is* The One, and he's going to work out just fine."  
  
"Well, then standing around here will get us nowhere, if you're so confident, mon capitane." Surge pulled himself into the open air again, taking a deep breath of digital air into virtual lungs. "Let's just go and get him, then we'll worry about whether or not he turns out to be who we're after." A brief pause hung in the air before the scrape of the flint in his lighter ended it, the flame being reapplied to his cigarette. "Or another Ghent." 


	3. The Spanish Inquisition?

"Wake up... An eye is upon you."  
  
-- Introduction, 'Powerman 5000: Tonight the Stars Revolt'  
  
He had all the trappings of a nerd, as the stereotypical image goes. A half-finished bottle of cheap cola sat on the desk alongside his keyboard, no glass to be seen, after all, why bother pointlessly getting a glass dirty when all you'd have to do is wash it, when the bottle is perfectly good to drink out of? A cheese sandwich that had spent two minutes in a microwave graced a plate to his left. He *had* to dirty a plate, because those 'toasted' sandwiches got far too hot for his hands to keep from dropping on the carpet and making a dirty great big mess which he would be held accountable for, incurring the wrath of his mother. And that, he did not want to happen, because then he'd be cast from his familiar spot in front of the computer and forced to do something constructive or useful, and that was again, something he considered most unpleasant. A pair of headphones were wrapped around his head that he had 'low-keyed' from the school he once went to, which he did not much like either, and they were playing music to him at levels which would send small woodland animals into a coma, but were simply destroying his sense of hearing as far as he was concerned. He didn't care, really, all that mattered was that Metallica was playing, and playing loud. He maintained the ideal that music only sounded right when you couldn' hear properly for an hour afterward.  
  
Humming along with 'Holier Than Thou' he put his thin fingers (often called piano fingers for some reason, which he thought was ridiculous because he didn't play) to his keyboard again, tapping out line after line of conversation to people he had never met, but enjoyed talking with anyway. Left to one side for the moment was a near complete re-write of the Half-Life game mechanics, which had racked his brain for far too long for him to think about. He scratched behind his left ear irately, the other hand trying to itch at a nasty spot on his head. His hair was brown like mud, and because he didn't like it's colour he also didn't care for how it looked, which meant that mostly it stuck out in all directions like a frightened plate of spaghetti. His eyes were brown, also, but there was very little care involved in eyes, so each morning all he had to do was put on his silver, oval spectacles because he was short-sighted and hated having to walk around squinting at things only to find out they weren't worth trying to squint at. He was tall for his age, tall by most standards, even, and had a build that could only be described as lanky. His arms and legs always seemed to be all over the place, especially when he was trying to play sports or run somewhere.  
  
Without warning, his screen went blank, windows opened to people and places around the world replaced with straight black. "Aw, frap." He was most understandably not in the mood to be interrupted by such ridiculous errors. He poked at the escape key half-heartedly to see if he hadn't hit another key that he shouldn't have, but the dark screen stayed put, staring blankly back at his irked face. Then, as unexpected as his screen turning blank, letters began to form across it, typed out slowly so he could read them as they popped up, green and interesting against the black. It read, quite simply: The Matrix has you... Matrix? What? The young man tried Alt- C, and that too failed to disperse the text, until what replaced it was another line as incoherent and vaguely sinister as the first. 'They are watching you...' "What in the hell?" He looked over each shoulder, trying to see anybody who might be watching him, and without suprise, his cursory inspection turned up nothing but a potplant he had not seen in the office before, and that his bottle of cola was empty. 'Noone expects the Spanish Inquisition.' Great. Now his computer had some strange Monty Python virus, making him silently vow to never again download an .MP3 onto the PC which he didn't own.  
  
One final time, the screen changed it's mind on what it wanted to tell the young man sitting before it. 'Knock, knock, Spike.' His eyes narrowed suspiciously at the monitor, until the sound of knuckles banging against the front door made him feel as if his heart had leapt into his throat, pounding his tonsils for an escape route. "H-Hello? Coming, yeah, gimme a sec..." Pushing back the chair in which he sat, Spike took one last look at the screen. It was blank. "Going nuts," he mumbled under his breath, rubbing at his long face with one hand. Through his tasteful home in suburban Palmerston North, New Zealand, he walked, strangely hesitant towards opening the door, lest it be another portent of doom his computer had been giving him. In front of it, he stood with his hands at his sides, struggling to find strength enough to lift one hand so that he could perfrom so small a task as open the door. The door shook violently again as the knuckles found it a second time, loudly signalling somebody outside didn't much like it out there and thought being in might be much better. Spike put his hand on the knob, and snatched open the door.  
  
"Hello deary!" A typical 'little old lady' stood in the doorway, clutching a conspicuous amount of paper pamphlets in one hand, and her trundlebag in the other, it's wheels resting on the pathway up to the front door of Spike's house. "Is your mother in, wee man?"  
  
Spike sighed inwardly, though something kept him from voicing several of the nasty things that came to him to tell the crazy old bat. "No, Mrs Hall, she's out getting groceries at the moment. You want me to take a message for her?"  
  
Mrs Hall shook her head, the floppy brim of her oversized red panama wobbling in the breeze. "No thankyou, sweetheart. Though you could help me, couldn't you? A nice strong boy like you could help out with putting up some nice big decorations, couldn't you?" She handed him a pamphlet, covered in enthusiastic platitudes for the local community group, who were having some kind of social gathering which would be called a party, but seeing as how the only people who would be going were cantankerous old men and little ladies that yelled at you for looking at their bingo cards, Spike wanted as little to do with it as possible.  
  
"Aw, Mrs Hall... I'm kind of busy at the moment. His eyes drifted to the sheet again, which diligently informed him that the social - he was already calling it the 'cemetary' in his mind - would be in a few short hours. "Can't it wait?"  
  
True to form, Mrs Hall shook her head and put on her infamous smile, which was enough to melt the hearts of even the most staunch teenager, the way her cheeks all crinkled up and made her look so much like the friendly old lady on the 'Aunt Betty's Pudding' packet that you couldn't help but smile along with her and agree with whatever she said. "Oh, well... I guess I'll have to find somebody else to help, then, sweety." She half-turned, placing her pamphlets back into the trundlebag, until that knowing glint flicked on in the corner of crafty eyes. "Would you mind helping me get this bag full of cakes into my car, then?"  
  
"Cakes?" Spike repeated, hardly daring believe she had said that magical word. "You... Do you have any of your custard squares?"  
  
She smiled brightly, knowing full well the leash to which all teens are inseperably bound: Their stomach. "Oh, yes, but I suppose they wouldn't be of any interest to you, seeing as how you're not going to be at the community hall tonight and all.."  
  
He was very quickly reconsidering that fact, being as how Mrs Hall had thrown together some of her infamous baking. "O...Kay. I'll come around and help out."  
  
"Good boy." She reached into the trundlebag and pulled out a set of flowing red robes which she tossed to Spike, who in turn caught them, running the smooth material across his fingers. "The night's theme is Spain, Troy. Put that on if you like, you can be an Inquisitor!" She thought it might be frightfully more exciting if he werer able to play as one of the 'bad guys'. Little did she know that he considered fancy dress being for little kids.  
  
He certainly spent longer staring at the cloak than necessary. "Spanish Inquisition, huh? Yeah... I'll be there." Spike turned inside, custard squares and marshmallow delights forgotten with the growing weight of the robes in his hands. The messages on his computer had told him that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, and here he was, holding a set of robes that would make him look just like one of them for a social that he, until a few minutes ago, had no idea about.  
  
He wasn't expecting that.  
  
***  
  
Surge grimaced. He was not the sort of man that made a habit of grimacing, not because he was afraid of the lines it might put on his face but because of the fact that it wasn't often something so terrible came along that it was enough to make him grimace. He did grimace then, though, because the old woman to his right that had just vocally bashed him for trying to steal something from her armada of bingo cards had requested 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon' from the equally decrepit little man who had decided to be one of those newfangled disc jockeys for the night. Surge didn't want bingo cards, old music, or even to be at that ridiculous social. Surrounded on all sides by that musty scent of old, wheelchairs, zimmer frames and so many crutches he had to remind himself he wasn't in a hospital, Surge quietly hummed 'Sad but True' to himself, lest the bingo woman hear him, and take to him with the nearest mobility aid.  
  
Sitting to his left, Volt picked up on the tune and joined in softly, surrounded on all sides by a sea of elderly which would quickly turn violent if they heard the two unusual men humming such outlandish music. The hall was wooden, and plain just like the people who were holding the social in it, who may as well have been wooden for all the moving they did. Not even Buddy Holly's greatest hits had managed to move them, but it had managed to make Surge feel physically ill. He leaned to Volt, speaking in a hushed whisper so as not to disrupt the rapt attention that Bingo Woman was paying to Joule, who had been snared by a number of cute little partygoers into calling the bingo numbers on the stage at the front of the hall. "I'm going for a cake from the stall at the side of the room. You want anything?"  
  
Volt nodded quickly. "Out?" He was mildly disheartened by Surge quickly shaking his head, jerking it towards the doorway as a reminder that they still had a certain someone to wait for. "Oh, alright then. Um... Could you get me one of those chocolate biscuits with the marshmallow on top?" His smile flashed anew when Surge at least nodded to that, and carefully pushed back his chair to escape his position alongside the little old lady who was even then fixing Volt with an evil glare - trenchcoats were not the sort of things the elderly appreciated when the night had a 'theme' to the contrary, and from what Volt could tell, it was something to do with Spain. Somebody had attempted burritos, even though they were Mexican, which were laying forgotten on a table just under the stage because none of those who had turned up really liked spicy foods which might upset their 'picky' digestions.  
  
Surge was halfway to the cake stall when Spike finally made his entrance, dressed in the robes that Mrs Hall had provided and looking as though he were about to be sick, which he actually was, as he had walked an awful distance dressed as one of the Spanish Inquisitors and was feeling rather silly after passing cars had tooted at him, small children had stared, and the elderly had mumbled about how cute he looked. He *hated* when the elderly said nice things about him. Little did he remember that the gathering which he had dressed up for was an entire horde of the elderly, who had all turned around in their seats to get a look at him after Mrs Hall, who was just handing Surge a marshmallow delight and a jam tart, began to wave enthusiastically and in turn, dropped the jam tart. Stammering apologies to Surge, she bent down and helped him to clean up the mess as the elderly converged on Spike. From the seats they came, from the dancefloor, from the bingo tables and from the cake stall, they came to him like sheep to something that sheep like to mill towards, all with wide smiles and lots of wonderful things to say about Spike. 'Oh, he's so cute!' was used more times than Spike would care to consider, grannies by the dozen pinching at his cheeks, poking at his chest and otherwise tossing him about like a piece of meat.  
  
From her vantage point Joule could make out a flash of the red robes that they had contrived to have Spike arrive in, so they couldn't possibly miss which person they were looking for. She hastily called out a few numbers off the top of her head until the lady nearest to Volt jumped out of her seat screeching 'BINGO!' at the top of her lungs, sending her cards all akimbo and conscripting the young man in the trench to help her pick them all up so she could collect her winnings. Joule carefully picked her way through the crowd which was returning to their seats, only a few dedicated old biddies remaining to bother Spike, whose speech had by then been reduced to 'Hullo,' and 'Yes, Mum's fine.' She tactfully reminded the two old ladies of the Slave Auction that would be starting in a few minutes, and that they had better get to their seats or else they could miss out on that handsome man in black who was helping Mrs Hall scrape the last remnants of strawberry jam off the wooden floor with a sheet of paper. "Thanks," mumbled Spike, scratching behind his left ear. "But I think that guy's gonna be more than a little pissed that you volunteered him to spend the night with one of the mob here."  
  
She laughed politely, which turned into a full giggle when she could make out the pair she had dislodged from Spike pointing and whispering to each other, sizing up Surge, who was still none the wiser of his recruitment. "He'll get over it, he's Surge, after all. You know him?"  
  
Spike looked between Joule and Surge, his mouth hanging half-open in disbelief. "*The* Surge? That altered the pay accounts of the entire Waiouru Army base?"  
  
"The one and only," she replied, cooly. "I'm a friend of his, Joule. It's a pleasure to meeet you, Spike."  
  
What had been only mild discomfiture quickly developed into full-blown paranoia when he heard his alias used without an introduction, Spike's head tilting carefully to the left as it always did while he thought something was either confusing, or required additional thought. And the woman in leather talking to him deserved both. "How'd you know that name?"  
  
She slipped an arm over his shoulder, sending his pulse somewhere into the stratosphere and gently guiding him towards Surge. "Come on... We have a lot to talk about."  
  
Before they arrived alongside him, one of the elderly ladies had whispered something into Surge's ear, his eyes turning wide behind his black shades in horror. "I'm doing... *What?*" 


	4. Bingo!

"What's that saying? If God's on our side, who the hell could be on theirs?"  
  
-- Private Reiben, 'Saving Private Ryan'  
  
The coffee store had not changed at all since the two men had last been there, except for the colours of the polished wood which was reflecting the dying rays of the sun, slipping below the programmed skyline and casting it's veil of orange and red over the city that lay in the minds of sleeping men. They sat in their same seats, the table nearest to the door - one never knew when one would have to make a strategic exit - with the other chairs removed so nobody would bother to ask if they might sit with them. They did not want to talk to anybody, although both had, at one point or another, been approached by women of questionable intelligence to do just that, and they had politely refused at every chance, as they would refuse anybody. Except now, for the other thing which had changed in the small store was that there was a third chair which had been drawn up to their table, and another coffee accompanied the two which usually sat on the table, just as untouched as it's companions.  
  
The third man, feeling distinctly out of place, took the cup into his hand, and took a drink of the bitter brew - the Matrix promptly informed his mind that it needed sugar, but nonetheless, the caffeine would take effect very soon. The calming of his nerves took effect instantly, though, which was a good thing, even if the effect was more from the sheer action of taking a sip than the beverage itself. The two men he had come to talk with had said very little, other than to buy him the coffee which he didn't want, and to tell him - certainly not offer, as gentlemen do - to sit. He sat. One of them was staring at him now, blank eyes boring into him from behind smokey black plastic, as he had been for the past half hour, and the other was staring out onto the street, his fingers resting idly on the saucer that had been supplied with his coffee. "I'm not sure what you expect me to do," he said, putting his drink carefully on it's saucer and trying not to make it clatter too much as he withdrew his shaking hand.  
  
"We do not expect you to do anything, Mr Harris." The man who had been staring at him spoke, and though his jaw moved, the rest of his body remained perfectly still as if somebody had glued him there, or some great puppeteer had snipped him free of his strings and he was unsure of what to do without guidance. "My partner and I are reasonable men, here to offer a bargain as you know. Are you certain of what you would like in return for your cooperation?"  
  
The third man nodded sharply. He knew exactly what he wanted, what he had prayed for any deity to grant him, and was now being offered by these shadows among men. "Kill Surge. Kill him, and you can have whatever you want."  
  
The reply was instantaneous. "Access codes for the Zion mainframe."  
  
While the third man may have thought the one who was staring out the window was not paying attention, this was far from the truth. His head snapped around to face the pair haggling beside him, a minuscule twitch in his lip before he spoke making him seem less direct than his associate. More like was scheming, or had something to hide. "You will give us the information, simply for killing Andrew Dalton?"  
  
"I'm tired of this game." Pulling his trenchcoat comfortably into place, the foreigner pushed back his chair and stood, eyeing the one who had spoken to him last. "Bring me what I want - Surge's head - and you'll have your precious codes. Thankyou for the drink. Gentlemen," he tapped his fingers to his forehead as though tilting his hat, and departed the store without another word. The two who belonged at that table turned to each other, snapping into a quick-fire review of the events that had taken place according to their design.  
  
"Treachery is a distinct human trait," Doe observed. "Many of them bow to it without fear of it's repercussions."  
  
O'Brian nodded his head. "His companions will not let him live if they discover what he has agreed to between us."  
  
"Revenge is another human trait."  
  
"You do not believe that you are as capable of revenge as a human?"  
  
"I am not human."  
  
"No, you are not, though you practise deception, guile and under- handedness to achieve your means."  
  
Doe took a moment to respond, the only one longer than a nanosecond as each Agent instantly knew what it was they wished to say. "They are useful traits, though human. Unlike other human properties, emotions; happiness, anger, hatred." He paused a second time, tapping his finger to make sure he had his partner's attention. "Mercy."  
  
O'Brian gave the barest tilt of his head which Doe perceived as a nod. "Indeed. But we would not be in this position if I had not exercised mercy."  
  
The second Agent quirked a brow upward, visible over the square of his glasses. "Elaborate."  
  
"If I had not saved Dalton in the first place, Harris would not want him dead - and we would not have so powerful a bargaining tool."  
  
"An interesting hypothesis. I doubt Smith will accept it as I do, however."  
  
"Smith? What does he have to do with this?"  
  
"He will be here when we have the Zion codes." Doe extricated himself from the table, pushing his coffee distastefully to arm's length. "He will not be so impressed with your theories on mercy, O'Brian."  
  
Something akin to apprehension found itself articulated on O'Brian's expression, pale face turning a shade lighter at the mention of the one name every Agent knew better than their own... Smith. Meeting him would not be pleasant, as he had hard enough a time of explaining why he had saved Dalton in the first place. He, too, stood from the table, following his associate out to the immaculate black sedan parked outside of the coffee store, leaning against the passenger's door as he patiently waited for Doe to let him in. The Agent stood still as the door unlocked, letting the digital sun cast it's rays over his pixilated face and ignoring the curious glance Doe shot his way before slipping into the car. He followed the other man's lead, getting into the car and closing the door loudly beside him, fastening his safety belt from a mixture of habit and programming.  
  
Finally, he added one more strange thing to the list of unusualness the pair of Agents had observed that day; he reached behind his ear and scratched at an itch which had developed there, obviously a glitch or a quirk of some kind in an obscure line of the code which made his being, stored on some long-forgotten chip of silicon somewhere in the bowels of the machine world which had once been Earth. Doe turned the ignition, the powerful engine thrumming into life, the sound bringing an unexpected smile to O'Brian's lips, reflecting on how much he simply enjoyed to hear that sound, as did some humans. The man in the driver's seat shook his head once, reversing the car onto the street and driving off, headed towards the community hall on the outskirts of the town. "I hate bingo," grumbled Doe.  
  
***  
  
None of the group that had assembled in the large black car behind the community hall in the parking lot were particularly comfortable, the most of them because there was one more person than they were used to, and the fourth because he didn't feel all that much like he belonged in there. Joule and Volt sat in the front seats; Joule with her arms draped over the headrest of her seat and Volt keeping his hands firmly on the wheel, humming to himself a comforting tune so that he wouldn't be quite so jittery if they needed to make a quick escape, even though he knew he would be just as skittish, regardless. Surge occupied the back seat, his hands held out in front of him before Spike, who was staring at a choice he had to make at that exact moment - he would never get that chance again, and he knew it. Fighting the urge to scratch the itch behind his ear, Spike put a quivering hand out and took the Red Pill, tucking it into his palm. The large man in front of him smiled, patting him gently on the shoulder. "Good choice," affirmed Surge, "Now, we've got to get you somewhere we can do something with that."  
  
"But the Slave Auction!" Spike, hesitant, pointed his hand dumbly towards the bingo hall. "And Mrs Hall is going to want her robes back." Despite keeping company with three others in sinister - he was sixteen, sinister had no effect if he thought he would look cool in it - coats and jackets, Spike was still stuck in his Inquisitor costume, not looking the part at all with his glasses and frizzled hair.  
  
Tapping Volt on the shoulder to start the car, Surge answered with a shrug. "I don't particularly want to spend the night with the lovely yet deranged Mrs Mulqueen. As soon as she had dragged me off that stage she'd pulled a credit card book filled with pictures of cats." Looking up at the source of a giggle, he frowned at Joule. "Anyway, you're not going to have to worry about those robes much longer, Spike," Joule giggled again, "And *not* because of her, unfortunately."  
  
Somehow, Spike rather liked the idea of Joule being the one to dispose of his robes for him. "Oh," he murmured, a little disappointed. "So where are we going?"  
  
Volt, shifting the transmission back into first and heading off down the street, tilted his head back slightly to answer. "We've got a, erm, little place on the other side of the town." They rounded the corner as he spoke, the image of Mrs Mulqueen running from the hall with a stack of photographs held above her head slipping from the rear vision mirror. "You'll get to meet Jack when we get there, you'll like Jack."  
  
Spike's uncertainty about the absent member of the party was not at all helped by a short grunt from Surge, who pounded his fist into the leather seat he was sitting on, shifting his weight and feigning as though he was attempting to get comfortable. The young man shrugged, and did the same, sitting back into the deep, soft seat and trying to see around the seat in front of him to discover whether or not he knew the route they were taking, which didn't do him any good when he was distracted by Joule staring at him. Surge, too, seemed to be staring from the corner of Spike's vision, but not at him, rather at the fact that Joule was staring. The only person that wasn't staring was Volt, and that was because he was driving and if he started staring they might all end up in an awful mess and their trip would have been wasted, so Spike thought it a good thing to just keep quiet, letting Joule and Surge do their staring and not bothering Volt so he might start.  
  
He was, by the end of the trip, feeling rather sick. The route that Volt had taken them on lead into the industrial area of Palmerston North - if the relatively small city could be said to have such a thing - and to an immense building which from the outside, reminded Spike of an aircraft hangar. Possibly because that's what it once was, but was no longer. Joule got out, pulling open the large steel roller doors so the car could rumble it's way into the building, the headlights blaring their white glow onto all and sundry. It had become dark, and as Joule slipped away from the shining lights, Spike imagined her simply disappearing into the darkness without a fuss; his chief concern at that moment was that these strange people might make him do the same. The simple lightbulbs hanging from the high ceiling flickered dimly as they began to warm up, and Volt cut the power to the engine, the sound of which died promptly, leaving only the sound of his own pulse in Spike's ears as Surge pulled open his door and instructed him to get out. He hadn't even noticed Surge leave the car. There wasn't an awful lot to look at - all he could see were four walls, probably a dusky grey in the rising moonlight, and the rolling steel door which had admitted the car to the hangar. "Where are we?" he asked, kicking aside a tiny stone on the poured concrete floor, smooth under his sneakers.  
  
Joule and Volt had already disappeared, leaving Spike standing in front of Surge in the quiet. "This is our workshop, if you will. This is where we our most important work to do with the Matrix begins."  
  
As his eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, Spike could make out the other two flitting excitedly around a morass of equipment, a few sophisticated-looking devices surrounded by tangles of wire and dusty, derelict technology. "Cool," he said, his breath rising in a thin plume of air before his face. Behind him he could hear a lighter's flint being struck to produce flame, and the sound of immense lungs drawing breath into them. Sure enough as he turned around, Surge had begun puffing away on a cigarette, one hand leaning on the trunk of the car as he stared out the roller door and into the street, the giant of a man acting as their smoking sentinel while Joule and Volt did whatever it was they were doing that concerned him. To Spike, Surge looked as though he might suddenly turn into the Cigarette Smoking Man from the 'X-Files'. He thought he looked damned cool.  
  
Surge shifted onto his feet as a dark figure stepped into view across the doorway. His coat swirled around his legs in some unseen breeze, as an arm lifted up with fingers spread in a silent greeting - until, of course, he spoke. "Evening, folkies." Spike watched Surge pull the middle finger on the hand that was holding his cigarette, pointing it towards him, and started snickering loudly, which brought Jack's attention on him. "That's him, huh? He's Spike?"  
  
"It's rude to talk about somebody in the third person when that person happens to be present, isn't it, Spike?" chided Surge, inhaling another breath of nicotine-laden air. He let it out at length, casting a veil of smoke into the space between he and Jack, who was already beginning to smoulder more violently than the lit end of the cigarette.  
  
Starting to reply, Jack's words were cut off by the sound of a car gunning down the street towards the hangar, the sound of which was enough to make him fold his arms smugly, watching Surge's reaction. The other two of his crew looked up curiously towards the door without slowing in their work, while Spike began to scratch behind his ear. "I hope you don't mind," drawled Jack in his most obnoxious tone, dripping contempt like honey, "But I invited a couple of friends here. To officially welcome our little friend to the Matrix." The engine's noise switched suddenly to the sound of tyres screeching protest against the street as they were slewn into a new direction, the heavy vehicle which rested on them coming to a stop with it's headlights pointed dead centre into the doorway, making it impossible for Spike to see. He threw up one hand defensively, Joule, Volt and Jack all forgotten as he watched Surge, calm as ever, simply take another breath and reach into his greatcoat, taking into his other hand... A pistol?! Oblivious to the world around him which had disappeared into blinding white, Spike watched in a daze as Surge dropped his cigarette to the ground, crushing it under the heel of his boot, and used his freed hand to cock the weapon.  
  
The reason why became apparent quickly. The doors on the invading car cracked open simultaneously, thrown open to full length to cast a wide shadow over Spike, finally giving him his sight back. As the two dark men in the black suits climbed from the vehicle, synchronised perfectly, he suddenly wished he wasn't able to see, one of them turning his view onto Spike - or so Spike guessed, the man's eyes totally hidden under black glasses like Surge's, only square. The other man turned to the one staring at him, lifting his hand towards Surge. "That is the one." Surge laid his hand over Spike's chest softly, stepping foward from the trunk of the Resistance vehicle and carefully maneuvering the young man they all hoped was The One behind himself defensively.  
  
Jack grinned maniacally in the blistering white light around him. "Agents, you have your target. Kill that man!" 


End file.
